THE ROMANOV CROSS by Robert Masello

My assignment recently as a contributing editor of The Big Thrill, the monthly ezine from The International Thriller Writers was THE ROMANOV CROSS by Robert Masello. This one came in when I was in the middle of another novel. This is not normally an issue as I have two weeks or so to complete the book I am on, leaving me plenty of time for the new one. However, this time I was only half way through Ken Follett’s monster WORLD WITHOUT END. That’s over 1,200 hundred pages for those who have not read it. The reason I mention this is that I was really enjoying the book and hated to put it aside so I could read THE ROMANOV CROSS. Not the best frame of mind to give a book a fair hearing I hear you say, and you would be right.

However, Robert Masello didn’t need a fair hearing from me. The book grabbed me from the start and never really let go. This book is compelling. That’s not a word I use often in my reviews, you can check if you don’t believe me. The book shifts effortlessly between the time of the Romanovs just before the revolution and the present day.We are introduced to Anastasia, Grande Duchess and daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II as well as the always interesting Grigori Rasputin. There have always been suggestions that Anastasia may have escaped when the rest of her family were killed in 1918 by the secret police. Masello ties into this uncertainty linking reports of the families’ Haemophilia with a possible immunity for the Spanish Flu. READ MORE